Abstract

This paper intends to discuss the stock issues in the Leader of the Opposition’s speech in Academic British Parliamentary Debate. The Topic-Flow-Tool was adopted to figure out the stock issues covered by prestigious international debaters in their speeches as the Leader of the Opposition. It is concluded that prestigious international debaters tend to cover four stock issues in their speeches as the Leader of the Opposition, including “stance”, “counter plan”, “rebuttals towards the Proposition side” and “the substantive part”

Key Words:  Topic-Flow-Tool  BP debate  Leader of the Opposition  stock issues

摘  要

本文以话题链工具（Topic-Flow-Tool）为研究方法，以模拟英国议会制辩论（Academic BP debate）中“反对党领袖”的角色为研究目标，对世界知名辩手所撰写“反对党领袖”的辩论稿进行文本分析，旨在发现模拟英国议会制辩论中反对党领袖演讲稿中的辩论要素问题。结果发现国际知名辩手趋向于在自己的演讲中涵盖四个辩论要素，即（1）己方立场，即该场辩论中反方所持的立场；（2）应对方案，即按反方立场应如何解决问题；（3）反驳，即反方针对正方所提出的论点的驳斥和（4）己方论点预览，即反方论点的概括说明

关键词：话题链工具  模拟英国议会制辩论  反对党领袖  辩论要素

1 Introduction
As an effective means to show participants’ talents and their language skills and critical thinking skills, a great many debate contests are held at home and abroad. Among them, the British parliamentary debate style is one of the most popular. It is termed as ABPD and Fan Qiqing(2013) defined it as “a competition of ideas and requires a good command of language skills, thinking skills and rhetorical or persuasive skills.”
As one of the most popular formats, ABPD has been adopted by the FLTRP Cup National English Debating Competition and the World University Debating Championship. An ABPD round involves four teams, which are “Opening Government”, “Opening Opposition”, “Closing Government” and “Closing Opposition”. Each team has two members. They are “Prime Minister” and “Deputy Prime Minister” from the Opening Government, “Leader of the Opposition” and “Deputy Leader of the Opposition” from the Opening Opposition. In addition, Closing Government includes “Member of the Government” and “Government Whip” while Closing Opposition includes “Member of the Opposition” and “Opposition Whip”. In ABPD, all these different positions should fulfill their roles, which is regarded as one of the core issues in judging the debate.